Every holiday season, brands release heartwarming, festive adverts to capture the spirit of Christmas and connect with their audience.

But what makes one ad resonate more than another? Using our consumer psychology expertise and NEOAI we compared two Christmas adverts from last year: one that was a hit, and another that missed the mark. 

As the holiday season approaches, brands face a critical choice in their creative strategy: should they feature real people or cartoons in their Christmas campaigns?

Both approaches have distinct psychological advantages, yet the decision has a profound effect on how consumers perceive authenticity, emotional engagement, and brand loyalty.

Understanding the nuances behind this decision is essential for leaders aiming to maximize the impact of their holiday messaging. 

In the frenzy of holiday shopping, it's tempting to assume that consumers all follow the same path—planning ahead. But in reality, a significant segment of shoppers operates differently, and many brands miss out on the opportunity to connect with them effectively.

Identifying and targeting these last-minute shoppers can be a powerful way to differentiate your brand and optimise holiday sales. 

The sheer scale and unpredictability of consumer behavior during Black Friday can make it challenging for companies to devise effective strategies. This is where predictive modelling using machine learning becomes invaluable.

We are often asked what our consultancy offers beyond expertise in psychology, behavioural science, and data science. After asking our clients what they think sets us apart. Here's what we found:

The way customers see loyalty is changing a lot. What used to feel like a close connection is more and more about making smart choices, with lots of different factors coming into play. This isn’t the end of loyalty programs, though; it just means businesses need to be more thoughtful and understand their customers’ better. By getting to the heart of what influences perceptions of value, businesses can make their loyalty programs more effective and efficient without breaking the bank.

Consumer loyalty and reward schemes might have a negative impact on customer experience, not because of the rewards themselves, but due to the expectation of rewards…

The way customers see loyalty is changing a lot. What used to feel like a close connection is more and more about making smart choices, with lots of different factors coming into play. This isn’t the end of loyalty programs, though; it just means businesses need to be more thoughtful and understand their customers’ better. By getting to the heart of what influences perceptions of value, businesses can make their loyalty programs more effective and efficient without breaking the bank.

Marrying finance with psychology = the Greater Fool Theory . Amidst cognitive biases, can we chart a clear investment path? Discover a refreshed perspective on financial strategy.

Explore how banks, insurers, and investment companies can better align with FCA regulations by understanding an overlooked customer vulnerability – overconfidence.

Brands are increasingly using AI tools like chatbots, AI checkouts, and AI customer services. However, the deployment of these technologies has been met with mixed reactions. This suggest a need for brands to first understand the complex customer-AI landscape in order to implement AI systems more effectively.

The FCA have been somewhat vague about the definition of behavioural bias, handing responsibility over to firms to define it in their own terms. This puts many firms at risk because of their own biases…

Examining your customer data with a psychological lens can both stop you making glaring errors in your customer engagement but also surface hidden points of brand engagement that are relevant and will resonate with the hidden emotional needs of your audiences.

With luxury fashion profits skyrocketing and opportunity knocking, using consumer psychology to understand the evolution of luxury fashion gives new insight to changing fashion trends.

Before you invest in a new strategy, product or proposition, wouldn’t it be reassuring to know that it will successfully meet your objectives?

Imagine having the confidence that your marketing or communications content would work effectively with your target audience before you even launched it.

Many organisations are becoming more sophisticated at measuring whether a strategy or project has been successful and what could be done better next time, but we believe it also needs to be applied before a project or idea is committed to. IB can help you achieve this through an effective “pressure test” psychology assessment.

Over the years the marketing industry's approach has evolved from product-centric to customer-centric, and now to a human-centric approach.This is an important shift, changing focus from the customer to the relationships people have and not just the customer but also employees and the role of culture.

At the end of last year we ran some research in the House of Commons with MPs to raise awareness of the sheer number of children who go to school without breakfast and its impact on cognitive and physical attention has got some attention from the Times.

Great work by Arla Foods and Magic Breakfast for putting this together and continuing to drive awareness of this widespread problem.

Do you know how to abide by the new FCA Consumer Duty rules around 'behavioural biases'?

The first step for many companies is to start behaviourally auditing key products, communications and customer journeys. Find out more with IB’s new article on consumer duty and behavioural baises.

Trust is critical to any business (unless you are a monopoly). If your customer can take their money elsewhere, then you better not damage their trust in you.

By creating communications that include facts and emotional needs, you will appeal to both systems of the brain and significantly improve the relevance and impact of your messages or propositions.